Tim Samaras

At 55 years old, Tim Samaras physical status not available right now. We will update Tim Samaras's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Samaras was an autodidact who never received a college degree. He became an amateur radio operator at age 12 and built transmitters using old television sets. As an adult he held an Amateur Extra Class license, the highest amateur radio class issued in the United States, and was proficient in Morse code. He communicated by amateur radio when chasing storms and was also a storm spotter, reporting sightings of hazardous weather. At 16, he was a radio technician and was service shop foreman at 17. Immediately out of high school and without a résumé, he was hired as a walk-in at the University of Denver Research Institute. He obtained a Pentagon security clearance by 20, testing and building weapons systems.

Samaras became a prominent engineer at Applied Research Associates initially focusing on blast testing and airline crash investigations. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recognized him for his investigations of the TWA Flight 800 crash. His research included high-speed photography, such as on ballistics. He also worked at National Technical Systems and Hyperion Technology Group.

In addition to tornadoes, he was interested in all aspects of convective storms with particular research focus on lightning, for which he utilized cameras shooting up to 1.4 million fps. An accomplished photographer and videographer, another research method was photogrammetry, with some footage derived from cameras in probes shooting from within tornadoes. Samaras also shot for art and for pleasure. He was an avid amateur astronomer and also interested in electronics and inventions.

Samaras was the founder of a field research team called Tactical Weather Instrumented Sampling in Tornadoes EXperiment (TWISTEX) which sought to better understand tornadoes. His work was funded in large part by the National Geographic Society (NGS) which awarded him 18 grants for his field work.

Samaras designed and built his own weather instruments, known as probes, and deployed them in the path of tornadoes in order to gain scientific insight into the inner workings of a tornado. With one such in-situ probe, he captured the largest drop in atmospheric pressure, 100 hPa (mb) in less than one minute, ever recorded when a F4 tornado struck one of several probes placed near Manchester, South Dakota on June 24, 2003. The accomplishment is listed in the Guinness World Records as "greatest pressure drop measured in a tornado". The probe was dropped in front of the oncoming tornado a mere 82 seconds before it hit. The measurement is also the lowest pressure, 850 hectopascals (25.10 inHg), ever recorded at Earth's surface when adjusted for elevation. Samaras later described the tornado as the most memorable of his career. Samaras' aerodynamic probes were a breakthrough design for survivability inside tornadoes. A patent was pending for instrumentation measuring winds in 3D. Samaras held a patent, "Thermal imaging system for internal combustion engines", with Jon M. Lesko.

Samaras and his team logged over 35,000 miles (56,000 km) of driving during the two peak months of tornado season each year. When asked, Samaras said that the most dangerous part about following tornadoes is not the actual storms themselves, but rather the road hazards encountered along the way. In total, he tracked down more than 125 tornadoes during his career. His colleagues considered him to be one of the most careful chasers in the business.

Beginning in 1998, Samaras founded and co-produced (with Roger Hill) the National Storm Chasers Convention, an annual event held near Denver and attended by hundreds of chasers from around the world. Samaras's widow, Kathy, revealed in her first news interview since his death that she will continue ChaserCon, which consistently attracts luminary scientists and chasers as speakers. In 2005, he was named an "Emerging Explorer" by the National Geographic Society. From 2009 until the show's cancellation in 2012, Samaras was a featured personality on the Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers. He also worked for Boeing, doing field testing on hail-resistant skins for aircraft, and for the federal government during his career. According to Eileen O'Neill, president of the Discovery networks, Samaras' work was directly responsible for increased warning times ahead of tornadoes.

Samaras coauthored, along with Stefan Bechtel and Greg Forbes, Tornado Hunter: Getting Inside the Most Violent Storms on Earth (ISBN 978-1426203022), in 2009. Samaras authored or coauthored around one dozen scientific papers. He also contributed to Storm Track magazine. He appeared in major pieces in National Geographic in April 2004, June 2005, August 2012, and November 2013. He was also widely interviewed by news stations, newspapers, and magazines and appeared in documentaries.

Source